Americans Abroad: Shea included in Stoke City preseason tour

Brek Shea will join Stoke City’s first team in its preseason preparations in Germany.

The club announced manager Mark Hughes’ 23-man squad Friday, which includes the 24-year-old U.S. Men’s National Team member. The 12-day tour will begin in the Traunstein district of Germany and will include three friendlies against Borussia Monchengladbach, 1860 Munich, and Schalke.

Shea is coming off a 2014 loan to Barnsley that ended abruptly in March after he was involved in a post-match altercation with club supporters. The midfielder rejoined Stoke City immediately following the incident as the EPL side battled to its 9th-place league finish.

The rest of Stoke City’s 23-man preseason roster can be viewed after the jump:

Nope they left their other WC players like Peter Odemwingie and Asmir Begović off the tour roster. My guess is that Stoke already know what they have in those players and they are that deep so they just decided to give them a break.

Boyd scored for RB Leipzig against PSG. Playing just the first half, he had 4 or 5 shots and played reasonably well w/ his back to goal. Leipzig had lots of energy against PSG and probably will score a decent number of goals in the second division. Defense is a work in progress though.

It’s better he made the roster than be left off, but with a decent part of their squad still rested from the World Cup and potentially incoming transfers, I don’t think we can take this as a sign that Shea is going to get playing time for sure.

That said, if he does well, it can only help him in his quest for playing time.

If he doesn’t glue hs fingers together, put a cherry bomb down the toilet, or drop a piano on himself I think it’s a step in the right direction.

However, should he lose his bearings and somehow miss his flight back to England (assuming Stoke has booked him one) I think this adventure could stand to be cut short… I wish him well, but if things aren’t looking good I think he’d be well advised to seek a way out. Lost time is turning into a lost career.

They released the estimated worth of every Liga MX team rosters, I think you guys might find it a bit interesting to read this. It gives a general idea of what each team spends on players since they have no salary cap like MLS currently does.

Worth and “cost” are totally different. A player out of contract costs nothing. The best player in the world, if he is out of contract will cost not a cent, other than salary terms.

And, “worth” is also not rally relevant, since so much depends upon the length of the contract being transferred. If you sign a transfer with one year remaining on his contract, that player is worth a lot less than a player with 5 years remaining on their contract. The above two scenarios, are why teams try to sell players if they know they can’t get a player to renew, a year before the contract expires.

So, the linked article on “estimated worth” means very little to the actual cost of acquisition and to salary budgets. If the above linked article revealed actual salaries, like MLS releases, then that would have some informative value. This “estimate” tells you very little in that regard.

Shea is a player who excels when it is only physical attributes that come into play. But a player’s worth to a club also involves what he can do when the physical qualities are not enough.

The decision-making of the player matters, probably even more, given how strong athletically most professional soccer players are. Can he be clever with the ball? Can he take up positions and move to support his teammates either defensively or going forward? Can he make decisions that at once are positive in an attacking sense, but do not place his team in jeopardy of defending from a bad position? ( Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes are examples of players who have used great decision-making to extend their careers when their athletic prowess began to fade.)

I think it is the mental aspect of the game that Shea still struggles with. It is not as easy as some think to master the mental part of the game. I hope Shea gets it pretty soon.